The new colour bible: a gorgeously illustrated exploration of colour and the modern gaze, from an award-winning designer

'One of the best books on colour I've read. A layered tapestry of stories, insights and ideas, each beautifully and clearly written. For anyone interested in colour, it's a must' Marion Deuchars

Why are pencils yellow and white goods white? Why is black the colour of mourning? What connects Queen Victoria's mauve gown and Michelle Obama's yellow dress?

In Chromorama, acclaimed graphic designer Riccardo Falcinelli delves deep into the history of colour to show how it has shaped the modern gaze. With over four hundred illustrations throughout and with examples ranging widely across art and culture - from the novels of Gustave Flaubert to The Simpsons, from Byzantine jewellery to misshapen fruit, from Mondrian to Hitchcock's thrillers - Falcinelli traces the evolution of our long relationship with colour, and how first the industrial revolution, and then the dawn of the internet age, changed it forever.

Beautifully designed, deeply researched, and written with warmth and wit, Chromoroma is an engrossing account of shade and light, of tone and hue, of dyes, pigments, and pixels. It is the story of why we now see the world the way we do.

"Completely fascinating . . . I had no idea I knew so little about colour, Chromorama explodes the myths and fills in the blanks. A wonderful book." - BBC Radio 6

"Fascinating. A mine of ideas and questions, suppositions and facts. Although Keats mourned the rainbow's unmaking, Falcinelli, in drawing his myriad-hued references together, weaves a different magic into its arc" - The Times

"Brilliant. Chromorama looks at the history of colour in an accessible, innovative and very human way " - Creative Review

"Falcinelli is an esteemed graphic designer and the book has been a success in Italy; it covers a rich subject, familiar to all but so little understood outside a few specialisms that it has endless capacity to surprise. . . The elegant integration of text and images calls to mind John Berger's 1972 Ways of Seeing" - Literary Review

"Dazzlingly beautiful. . . A covetable book, perfectly designed, filled with enchanting images and stories. Falcinelli answers an essential question: what are books for? To remind us that nothing is fixed. Tastes, rules, prohibitions. . . everything changes" - La Repubblica